Touka x Kaneki Who we are
by Immiker86
Summary: May contain spoilers from Tokyo Ghoul:Re Touka Kirishima and the handful of surviving Anteiku staff are running a small cafe named :Re. Life is as good as it gets for ghouls, when Kaneki Ken, who has not been seen in over a year, suddenly appears and demands to talk to Touka. Touka can't help but wonder if there is anything left of the old Kaneki to salvage from the callous ghoul
1. Chapter 1

_As her eyes fell on him, glimpsing a mop of white hair through the filthy window of the small café, she froze, almost dropping the tottering tray of tableware she had precariously stacked in her arms. She would have rubbed at her eyes with her hands had they been free, brain refusing to process the impossible image of the boy on the street, walking by casually._

_When the doorbell of the café rang with a pleasant tingle, she remained facing the window, not looking at the door. There was a long silence, and it seemed to Touka Kirishima that the world had frozen, the din of the customers muffled. Then, through the ringing mutedness, cut a boy's voice. _

_After all the deaths, everything they had been through, the pain, the suffering, his voice had not changed one bit._

"_Touka-chan?"_

_She sneaked a look over her shoulder, determinedly keeping her head turned toward the window, and saw the boy standing timidly in the doorway of the small coffee shop, eyes downcast._

_The image of a blackhaired boy with a surgical eyepatch, smiling mildy and scratching the back of his head, seemed to shimmer like a mirage beside Kaneki Ken. Yet as she whipped her head around, almost dropping the pile of cutlery in the process, the smiling boy flickered and vanished._

_The whitehaired boy lifted his head, and Touka's eyes slid over him, took in his stange assortment of clothes, those customary amongst the people who have been isolated for so long that they've forgotten how to dress, how to act around other living things. _

_She had put off eyecontact as long as possible, but when their gazes met she felt hers contract in hurt, a sharp memory of all the agonizing hurt she had felt when he was gone. _

_Because those eyes, more than anything else, showed the passage of time, and the toll experience, violence and the will to protect one's near ones had taken on an innocent boy, trying to belong in two worlds at once._

_They were flecked with red, and seemed to echo aeons of loss, weariness, and pain._

_Touka remembered all the times she had ached to leave the café and find him, to see him, to find any sliver of the old Kaneki still inside him._

_She set the cups and plates down gently on a nearby table, narrowly avoiding disturbing an old man napping in his wheelchair as she did so. Then she walked toward the door, and turned down the corridor running perpendicular to it, all the time staring blankly ahead, eyes dull and not seeing._

_She almost bowled Yomo over in the hallway. Mumbling about a customer in the doorway, she climbed the stairs two at a time, reaching the second floor of the building, where she had taken up temporary residence. Entering her small room, and locking the door behind her, she lay down on her bed, fingers absentmindedly stroking the rabbit trinket that still hung on her phone, a relic of the past, now._

_A mixed storm of emotion was raging inside the female ghoul, and she wondered whether she was going to cry._

_ …_

"Can I come in?"

"Yes."

Touka sat up abruptly, smoothing down her hair and the front of her skirt. Her eyes were dry, weary from their inherent staring at the wall and she struggled with her feelings.

The door opened with a soft creak, and a serious-looking Yomo stuck his head inside.

"You could have said the customer in question was the long-lost Kaneki, Touka."

She ignored his comment.

Yomo sighed, and leaned against the doorway.

"He didn't even recognize me at first, you know. And even when I told him it was me, he just grunted a bit. I think he wants to see you, so I sat him down in the common room."

Touka's heart skipped a beat, and yet she struggled to appear calm.

"Did he say what he wants, or how he found us?"

"As for the latter, I have no idea, although he probably has his ways. The only reason he gave me for coming here was that he felt that he couldn't do it anymore."

A small crease formed between his eyebrows.

"Go talk to him, Touka."

"I don't want to."

"Do you want me to force you?"

"Bring it. We haven't sparred in a while, anyway."

The bearded ghoul sighed once more, before opening the door wider and beckoning towards the hall beyond.

"Just go."

She rose quietly, slipping past the fellow shopkeeper without another word. Striding down the hall, she stopped at a door not far from hers. She could faintly smell Kaneki´s scent from the other side.

She wondered briefly if it was one she would have recognized, had she not known who it belonged to.

Touka raised a hand and knocked on the door.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a long moment of silence following Touka's knock, seemingly amplifying the sound of knuckles on wood until it echoed through the narrow, dimly lit hallway. She stood there, nails biting into the palms of her hands, listening for any noise from within the common room with baited breath. Just when she thought he might have fallen asleep, or even left through the window, a callous, tired voice came from behind the door.

"Enter."

Slightly unnerved, Touka cracked the door open and stepped inside.

Kaneki was sitting in an armchair in a corner of the room, the light from the window shrouding his face in shadow. The female ghoul walked over, and quietly sat down on a chair opposite him, so that they were separated by a wooden coffee table.

Kaneki ran his hand through his snow-white locks, but otherwise made no attempt to acknowledge the girl's presence. Touka felt an air of boredom around him, and could not help to feel a twinge of loss for the awkward, tentative boy whom she had met what seemed like centuries ago.

"So what brings you here, shithead Kaneki?"

It was a feeble attempt at conversation, and they both knew it. The nickname, so often used before, seemed to linger awkwardly in the air, like a wrong tone in a familiar melody.

"Have you heard anything from Hinami-chan?"

Touka started, and yet as she looked up, she found that the boy opposite her was still determinedly avoiding her gaze.

"Wasn't she with you?" Kaneki shook his head slightly.

"Well, I'm sure she's fine. I mean, she's probably going to be a much stronger ghoul than even her parents, and Hinami knows how to take care of herself, so it should be fine." Touka felt herself beginning to babble, and she frowned inwardly, pinching her lips shut.

"What about Enji-san and Irimi-san?"

His voice remained even, yet his hands curled into fists, and Touka looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I haven't seen them around, although rumour says they survived." She cast a look outside the small window, glimpsing a rangly collection of apartment buildings on the other side of the street.

"You saved them that night, you know. I think most people would be more careful with their lives if they almost lost it once."

Kaneki nodded vaguely, yet said nothing.

"Why are you here, Kaneki?"

"I wanted to know what happened to them."

The answer took Touka aback slightly, since it was one she expected of the old Kaneki, not this detached stranger sitting in front of her, yet she didn't buy it.

"We both know your networks can find out much more than whatever scraps of information we glean from running a café. If you wanted to, you could have easily found out their whereabouts. So I ask you again, why did you come here?"

When he next spoke, his voice was a whisper, so quiet Touka almost missed it.

"I don't know how they would react to being contacted by a stranger like me."

She wanted to speak up, to punch him on the shoulder like before, and scold him for thinking of himself as a stranger, but something held her back. Maybe that something was the nagging sensation in the back of her mind that she thought of him as a stranger too.

"I just wanted to come back here, for a change of pace. I'd actually like to work in the café, if possible. :Re, was it? Anteiku makes a comeback, huh."

His tone annoyed her, somehow, as well as the feeling that he was still hiding things from her.

"We have enough waiters as it is." A blatant lie, since they were desperately under-staffed, as even Kaneki could have observed during his short visit.

"I can cook a bit, now. I had to learn, for appearances when dealing with human contacts, during… well, you know." The words 'my absence' hung in the air, layered with things unsaid, and rather forgotten.

"Anyway, the smell of food hardly nauseates me anymore, so I'd appreciate it if you would let me help out in the kitchen. I can hunt for myself if needed, but-"

"The staff of :Re gets their food the same way we did at the Anteiku. You will not harm any of the inhabitants of the area."

It pained her that she had to say those words at all, because the old Kaneki would never have considered it to be an option.

She rose, eyes fixed on the black nails of Kaneki's hand, deliberately avoiding his gaze.

"I think you can work here, although you'll have to ask Yomo about the employment conditions and such."

"I don't need money, although I would appreciate being given lodging here-"

Touka had already turned on her heel and exited the room.

…

Back in her bedroom, the female ghoul lay down on her bed with a 'whump', and laid her arm over her eyes. She was certain now, after the conversation, that the old Kaneki was gone. Tears slid down her cheeks unbiddien, and she clung to her pillow, curled into a knot, and sobbed quietly for the death of the boy she had loved.

And yet, when her tears had dried and eyes returned to their normal state hours later, she made a silent oath to herself. She would try to understand, befriend this new Kaneki, because in the end, he was all she had left of that time now, a shady memory of a sunlit day.


End file.
